The Unbeatable Enemy: Special Edition
by AlexG
Summary: Star Trek First Contact MIB crossover. Before the Enterprise goes back in Data reports that the Borg assimilated the Earth in the past. This is the story of the Borg assimilation of Earth. Chapter 2 has been Special Editionized.
1. Getting There Is Half The Fun

The noise was constant. To listen to it for five minutes alone would drive a sane person mad. The flat, mechanical voices droned on incessantly. The noises coalesced into a sound like that of a waterfall, or the whistle of the wind through a gap in a window; it was slow, in that each voice, and its thoughts, moved at a calm, metered, even pace. But it was also fast, with the jumble of voices coalescing . It was almost calm in its flowing, but it also carried an air of urgency. It was utterly horrifying, a behemoth of thoughts and energy, all working to carry out a goal. The calming, soothing, yet terrifying sounds continued, until one voice emerged, louder than all the rest, through the collective of the Borg, telling of its will.

"Multiple attempts to assimilate species 5-6-1-8 have failed. The defensive capabilities of the Federation are able to withstand us. We require a new strategy to organize their assimilation. An opportunity exists to undermine the planet's history and destabalize political and societal relations in the quadrant. It will be possible to dominate the Alpha Quadrant. Cube 3192 from Unimatrix 0-0-1 will initiate procedure 6-5-9-0-2 by proceeding through the transwarp hub to a sector outside the range of Federation sensors."

The cube departed the unicomplex and glided towards its goal: transwarp conduit 37-42-9. The trip was relatively uneventful, but the cube exited transwarp near a previously nonexistent structure.

"Station identified. Federation Deep Space station in orbit of Ivor Prime. The Federation has established a colony. It must be destroyed, or species 5-6-1-8 will continue to resist us." The station offered little resistance. But then, of course, resistance was futile.

Small skirmishes occurred throughout the remainder of the trip to Earth, but no major resistance was encountered. "Long range sensors indicate a large resistance near the third planet of the Sol system. As expected, the fleet is attempting to resist us there. Prepare for battle. Assimilation is futile at this juncture. Upon completion of procedure 6-5-9-0-2 the vessels will cease to exist. We will require as many drones as possible to facilitate the assimilation of species 5-6-1-8. Vessels are approaching. Prepare for battle. Maintain speed, warp 9.975."

The Starfleet ships flew in closer to the Borg cube, starting to fire upon it. The cube was efficient. It continued upon its course without stopping, firing on any ship which came too close.

"Vessel Identified. U.S.S. Endeavor on intercept course, grid A-1-5. Initiate directive 4-2-1."

Two Borg, disfigured beyond recognition of their original species, exited their regenration alcoves and joined the mass of cybernetically enhanced beings, joing them in their tasks of repairing, targeting, destroying, all the while recieving orders from the collective. "U.S.S. Defiant, U.S.S. Bozeman withdrawing from battle. Concentrate fire on the Defiant."

Earth grew closer with each passing second. "We are within range. Hail all capable receivers within range, on all frequencies. We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinciveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

As if in response to the Borg claim, the vessels began to fire at an even faster rate. A photon torpedo hit the Borg cube, and the section of the mighty vessel behind the bulkhead was exposed to vacuum. "Alter shield frequency. Triangulate shields to maximize energy absorbtion in the affected area. Set new course 0 mark 2-1-5. We have passed the defensive blockade. Vessels are pursuing."

One ship pressed its luck and came too close to the massive cube. A tractor beam locked onto the saucer section, and the Borg cutting beam sliced through the ship, exposing most of to to vacuum, and removing the threat it posed. "U.S.S. Lexington disabled." The ship got out one more transmission, detailing its crew status, before a core breach destroyed it.

As the cube neared Earth orbit, one last vessel approached from subspace.

"Vessel Identified. U.S.S. Enterprise. Enterprise declared primary target. Do not allow Enterprise to be destroyed." The Borg intercepted messages flitting between the ships, attempting to create a strategy that would defeat the cube. And then it was found.

"As expected, Jean-Luc Picard has used his knowledge of us to guide the fleet. Vessels are firing upon the central plexus. Diversionary measures are now complete. The Federation ships are focused on the cube. Launch sphere. It is the only vessel capable of creating the disruption. Once the sphere is in position, initiate procedure 6-5-9-0-2-B." The sphere was smaller and much faster than the cube. "Enterprise is pursuing the sphere, but it should not pose a threat. Initiate chronaton particle release."

The sphere proceeded through the temporal rift it had created.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

It's hard enough getting used to a 37 hour day, let along being awakened just after turning in for the night. J, therefore, wasn't thrilled to be awakened at this early hour, and he made that clear in his tone when he entered the main hall. "What's up?"

"Sat 42 picked up this image." K said, showing the live feed on the egg display.

"Who are they?" J asked.

"They don't match anything we've seen before," Zed replied. "They're not responding to our messages."

"That ship looks like a perfect sphere," J said, amazed. "Any idea what they're after?"

"We don't know. Wait a minute..." Zed trailed off as he watched the ship begin to rotate and fire charges of some kind at the planet.

"They're firing on the surface," K said. "This is gonna be one hell of a coverup to pull off. Bob, where are they firing?"

"--- ------ --- ------ -- ------ -------," Bob replied.

"Upper Montana... looks like there's a small settlement there."

"You gotta be kiddin'," J said. "Who could they be shooting at in that little shanty town?"

"Slick, come on," K called to him. "Coverup first, ask questions later."

"At least this shouldn't be so bad," J said. "Just a few country folks that could do without a few memories." J was optimistic, but K was surprisingly silent, even for him. 


	2. Beginning Of The End

"Procedure 6-5-9-0-2-B has been successful. Initiate procedure 6-5-9-0-2-C. The complex where the warp ship is being built is located at coordinates 41 degrees 1 minutes north by 113 degrees 17 minutes west. The target location will be in range in two minutes. Begin firing."

As the Borg Sphere began firing quantum charges at the surface, something unexpected happened. "We are being hailed. Historical records do not indicate that the inhabitants of the planet should be able to detect us. Cease firing. Increase resistance quotient for this species until a proper analysis of their defensive capabilities can be completed. In the interim, assimilation must begin. We will launch two of the five interceptors. One will assimilate the missile complex and surrounding areas to ensure that First Contact cannot occur. The other will land on the large desert portion of the planet where a collective can be established in relative solitude. The primary goal of this subjuncion is to construct an interplexing beacon in order to establish contact with the collective of this period in the Delta Quadrant. Reinforcements will be necessary."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

"This always been here?"

"It's a little something we picked up from the Roswell crash," K said.

"And we cruise around in a black Ford?"

"Saucer's only for extreme circuimstances, Slick."

"Guess this qualifies, eh?"

An agent ran up to K. "Strike team's ready, agent K."

"Good. Get them loaded up, then start prelaunch."

"Strike team? Planning to lay the smack down on them?"

"Kid, in case you didn't notice, there's an unknown species up there firing on civilians and sending down smaller craft. You suggest we just let them do that?"

"Hey, I agree witcha," J said, holding his hands up as if to say 'I surrender'. "I just don't remember you gettin' like this when it was an Aquillian battlecruiser, or a Korilian death ray, or an intergalactic plague, or Serlena, or the Light of Zartha."

"This is different. None of them came right out and attacked us."

"Man, what are you on? The Aquillians fired on us as soon as they got in range-"

"On one of our polar ice caps. Killing off a few penguins isn't a breach of intergalactic treaties. Killing civilians is."

"Alright, fine. Serlena, then. Completely took over MIB."

"One Kylothian and her two-headed moron without a gun between them is hardly an invasion."

"Yeah, whatever, man. I think you just realize I been right all along, and now you wanna handle it my way."

"We gonna go take care of this, or we gonna waste time?"

"Lead the way, oh great one," J mocked, as everyone boarded the saucer, which cloaked and headed off towards Montana. K was still pensive. He had to admit, J had a point. It was standard procedure for a lot of races to fire on you, if for no other reason that to prove their mettle. But, no. Something still seemed wrong about this. There was something about that ship that gave K a sense of foreboding. He didn't know what, exactly, they were up to, and the only way to find out would be to make contact.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

As it turned out, the Borg were up to no good at all. They had found their first victims. The interceptor landed in the center of town, and the foolish residents came out to watch the spectacle unfolding outside their shacks. They watched in amazement as 20 green lights flashed beneath the ship, then cleared, leaving behind 20 creatures who looked like a cross between humans and machines. As soon as they had appeared, the aliens moved towards the crowd. One of the men stepped forward.

"Hello," he said, waving his hands in the air in what he perceived to be a nonthreatening manner. "Welcome to the Earth. Do you... want to be taken to our leaders?"

The drone did not want to be taken to the man's leader, and it made its intentions clear when it grabbed him by the neck, injected him with nanoprobes, and threw him to the ground. It was more or less at this point that the residents of the town decided the had seen all they needed to see, and began to run. Some hid in the perceived safety of their shacks. Others ran into the woods, hoping to escape. The Borg assimilated those who hid in the town, but not the ones that ran. Their time would come soon enough.

The night's assimilations weren't over, however. A group of children had been playing in a dry river bed at the bottom of a shallow valley, and hadn't heard the commotion. The three boys and two girls, all aged between eleven and thirteen, had been friends for as long as they could remember. John, Andy, and Bill were having fun with, or rather at the expense of, the two girls, Anne and Betty. The boys were frighteing the girls, telling them stories about ghouls, goblins, monsters, aliens, and other such nasty things, as they walked through the chasm that a river had once flown through. It had become a favorite spot for the friends; cool in the summer and warm in the winter, offering a middle ground from the freezing winds or harsh sun. The conversation about demons and ghosts and all manner of other evil entities in the universe had been going on for quite some time now. These children were poor, having little but their imaginations to keep them company in the small shanty town. This evening's fright fest was becoming tiresome, but one creature of particular importance had been forgotten.

"Don't forget about vampires!" Andy, the eldest of the young five, said.

"Yeah! Yeah! Vampires!" Bill replied excitedly.

John was only too happy to tell more about the frightening creatures. "They can turn into bats so they can hide real easy. Then they turn into these tall, pale guys, and they have long fangs dripping with blood. When they hunt you, they fly from behind and then grab you and take you way up into the sky. And afterwards..." John let his voice taper off, savoring the terror he could instill in the others' hearts. He lingered, as if consumed in thought, with his audience hanging on to his last words.

"What do they do afterwards?" Betty asked, breaking the intense silence.

"They suck out all your blood, and then on top of all they've done to you, you become one of them and then you go and suck other people's blood out."

"I wouldn't." Said Anne, defiantly. "Blood must taste nasty, and besides I wouldnt want to hurt any of my friends or my family, even if I WAS a vampire."

"Its not up to you." Bill said. "You lose your mind. You just do what the other vampires do. They tell you psychically or something."

"Or you just become a zombie," John said. "They don't have minds at all. They just kill everyone they see."

"You can always tell when someone's been bit by a vampire," Andy said. "They leave 2 little holes on the neck where the fangs went in."

"I don't believe you." Betty said, shaking her head. "I don't believe in monsters or vampires, anyway!"

"You seem awful scared for someone who doesn't believe," Bill said.

"Wow." Andy gasped.

"What is it?"

"Guys, the town! Someone destroyed it."

"What?" John ran up to the top of the hill that Andy was looking over. He couldn't believe what he heard. He couldn't believe what he saw. The town was smoldering, with crumpled buildings and scorched earth. And there was something in the center of town... a building or something that hadn't been there before. And as the friends came over the hill to look, they saw creatures milling around at the base of the structure.

"Tall... pale... vampires." Betty said to herself mainly.

"They're not vampires," John said, annoyed.

"How do you know?"

"Vampires do not have lasers for eyes."

"Where is everyone?" Anne asked.

Before they could stop him, John ran down the hill towards the town. "Mom! Dad!" He called for his family. "Jenny?"

"Wait!"

"No!"

"Stop!"

"Don't!"

The other children called after John, but ran after him, not wanting him to be injured. They caught up with him as he stood a foot away from one of the aliens.

"Where are they? Where's my mom and dad?" John screamed. The drone contemplated him for a moment, then tilted its head ever so slightly. Four other aliens came over to join the group. What happened next took the children by surprise. It was so fast, they were already doomed by the time they realized what was happening. The first alien grabbed John by the chin and lifted him a few feet off the ground. Then he injected John in the neck with something, from tubes coming out of his hand and tossed him to the ground like a rag doll. The others grabbed onto the other children and did the same thing to them. The children sat up on the ground even as the aliens moved away, back to their original tasks.

"John, are you okay? John! Your skin!" Anne said.

But it was too late. John was already gone. The first fallen victim to a plague that would eventually sweep across the entire planet, leaving nothing in its wake. 


	3. If Only You Knew What Was To Come

The MIB jet landed in a clearing near a shanty town in upstate Montana. K had always liked to think he was prepared for anything; he was the tough, unshakeable man who never let anything take him by surprise. But what he saw when he got off the MIB transport stunned him like nothing ever had before. Not even when he had seen his first aliens, lost on a country road on his way to see his girlfriend. As soon as the door opened on the jet, his breath was taken away. The town was gone. The buildings were still there, but not as they should have been. This was supposed to be a shanty town, but K was greeted with a hub of activity. One of the ships that had been launched was at the center of all the buildings. It was connected to the buildings with a network of passageways. The buildings had been totally re-constructed. They no longer looked like shacks. Now they were structurally sound pieces of architecture. K suspected they would be able to withstand earthquakes, tornadoes, anything. Somebody had made major changes.  
  
J was next off the transport. "Damn!" was all he could say.  
  
"My sentiments exactly, kid." K said.  
  
"What could do this in such a short ammount of time?" J asked, more to himself than anyone else."  
  
"No species we've ever seen, I can tell you that."  
  
"What would drive a species to do this, anyway? They've violated every major treaty in the galaxy. They've gotta know they'll be held accountable for this."  
  
"Could be a political feud, trying to stir up tensions between the Earth and other planets."  
  
"You mean they're radicals among their own species?"  
  
"Or terrorists. Can't rule anything out."  
  
"Alright, how do we contain this?"  
  
"Start by--"  
  
Suddenly, the MIB team heard a scream from one of the shacks that hadn't been affected. "Help me! Help!"  
  
J and three others ran to the little shack and looked inside. The man who had called for help lay on the floor, clearly in pain. J looked at him, and saw that the skin around his neck was badly discolored, almost grey.  
  
"K!" J called. "Come look at this!" K ran over and looked at the man.  
  
"Looks like we've got an infection on out hands." he said. "Take him back to MIB. They'll look after him there."  
  
"Yes sir!" said one of the men as a gurney arrived. They loaded the man, who had fallen unconscious, onto it and took him back to the waiting jet.  
  
"What about covering this up?" J asked. "You really wanna bring him to MIB headquarters?"  
  
"We can't let him run around loose with an infection. It could spread across half the planet. And its going to take some serious effort to erase this from the history books." K said, looking at the transformed town.  
  
"So, what do we do now?"  
  
"Let's set up a search party, try to see who's responsible for this mess. Groups of two, half mile search radius from right here. J, you and I will check out the craft."  
  
The teams dispersed, and J and K ran to get armaments from the jet before it took off. Armed with Series IV De-atomizers, they began to search for a hatch on the craft in the middle of the town. K was the first to find something resembling a door. There appeared to be no controls, so he and J cut it open with a energized blade. They were about to enter the craft, but K's communicator began to beep. He whipped it out.  
  
"K here." He said.  
  
"K, Zed. We're monitoring the craft. They just launched three more craft. One toward San Francisco, one toward Cleveland, and one was headed toward New Guinea. We're sending teams to investigate."  
  
"Understood, Zed. Be advised, we may be dealing with an extra-terrestrial infection here."  
  
"Roger. Zed out."  
  
Again the two set about opening the craft, but they were again interrupted. This time a man ran out from the still-landed jet, clutching his neck. J could see two puncture holes, and the man's skin was changing colors like that of the civilian that had been loaded onto the jet.  
  
"What happened?" K asked.  
  
"The man that we rescued... he got up, and grabbed the doctor. Then he injected him with something... his skin started to change like this. Then the doctor grabbed me, and injected me the same way, with tubes coming out of his hand. They moved into the other parts of the jet... they're doing the same thing to the others... all of them..." the man knelt down on the ground and presssed his hands against his ears, as if trying to blot out a sound. "They're doing it to them... assimilating them... always assimilating... always assimilating all... there are so many voices... why won't they quit? Why won't they be quiet? Always the assimilation. Always assimilating, always!" The poor man was going insane before J and Ks' eyes. "Assimilate... Resistance is futile." The man got up and lunged at J, but K grabbed him and hit his head, hard, against the side of the ship. J heard the angent-turned-mad's skull crack, and he was dead.  
  
"What'd you do that for?" J asked. "We could have helped him!"  
  
"He was gone." K said. "Something changed him. He wasn't an agent anymore."  
  
"Then what was he?"  
  
"Something far more dangerous." 


	4. The Heart Of Darkness

"Let's move!" Major Timothy Bennet yelled at his troops, who had taken up defense at Vandenburg Air Force Base. "Fall back, we'll rendezvous in 20 minutes." The major took another shot at an intruder and saw his bullet deflected before retreating down the corridor. Where had they come from, and what did they want? The intruders hadn't made any demands or tried to take information. They had just come in force, taking base personnell and injecting them with some kind of pathogen that discolored their skin. The MPs on base had tried to shoot the intruders, but all of their bullets had hit some kind of force field, inflicting no damage whatsoever. Bennet had lead the one-sided battle, and had finally ordered his men to fall back. He was running through the corridors blindly, just trying to get away. He rounded a corner and smacked straight into one of the intruders. The man was about 6 foot 3, a whole head above Bennet. The intruder reached out and grabbed Bennet by the throat and began to lift him up off the ground.  
  
"Who are you?" Bennet screamed. "What do you want?"  
  
But the invader just injected him with tubules coming out of his hand and dropped him to the ground. Bennet could hear voices in his head, a white noise willing him on, to take up arms and fight.  
  
Against his own men.  
  
He turned another corner and saw a young lieutenant, staring aghast from the end of a corridor. The lieutenant fired a shot, but Bennet put up a force field to block it. Now that he was Borg, he understood what he had to do. Unknowing, uncaring, Bennet took the young lieutenant and assimilated him.  
  
* * *  
  
Weapons drawn, J and K entered through the hole they had cut in the ship. Their jet had long since taken off, commandeered by one of the alien entities. They found themselves in a small, confining space, with green lights casting eerie shadows among a thick fog. The occasional sound of a spark could be heard as it lit a section of the fog with a brilliant white light.  
  
"They need to get Martha Stewert up in here." J said. "A little curtains, some paint... it could really be something."  
  
"Somehow I doubt this species cares much about decor." K said, dryly as ever.  
  
The aliens were all plugged into sockets on the walls, and J could only guess what they were doing. Then two of the aliens got out of the sockets in the walls between he and K.  
  
"K, look out!" J yelled. K turned and found himself face-to-face with one of the aliens. He shot it in the chest while J dispatched of the other one. They fell to the floor with a THUMP.  
  
"Weaklings." J said. "One shot takes them down... it's just a matter of extermination."  
  
K, meanwhile, had knelt down to check the bodies. "J, do you recognize this one?"  
  
J looked at the alien's face more closely. "He's a Cepillapoid!" J was clearly surprised.  
  
"And this one's Human." K said of the other body. "I've seen humans killed by aliens before, but these were transformed somehow, made into aliens."  
  
"Like the agent just a minute ago." J replied.  
  
"And the man in the shack, and the agents on the jet."  
  
"Didn't Zed say there were more of these ships coming?" J asked.  
  
"Come on. Let's try to get something from their computers, maybe we can find out what they want."  
  
* * *  
  
"Security breach. Two humanoids have entered the vessel. Dispatch three of four and four of four to assimilate. Resistance quotient 2." Three of four and four of four exited their alcoves and moved to assimilate the first of the intruders.  
  
"K, look out!" was yelled from the other humanoid. The first turned and shot four of four, and three of four was shot in the back. K and J had thought their disturbance had gone unnoticed. But the collective had taken note.  
  
"Alert. Humanoids are equipped with energy weaponry. Adapt to weapon frequency. Resistance quotien increased to 5. Do not engage unless provoked. Allow humanoids to proceed and observe procedure." The collective chattered among itself, as the thousands of entities from the sphere made more decisions.  
  
"Humanoids from Earth have not posed a threat. Continue to assimilate Earth. New primary objective; construct interplexing beacon and link to collective of this period."  
  
* * *  
  
Two hours had passed. J and K had searched the entire ship two times over and found nothing. No computers, no data terminals, not even any sign of data storage. Nor were there weapons, food storage, or quarters. This species was turning out to be more than they had bargained for.  
  
"K, man, we're not going to find anything. Let's start taking these guys out!"  
  
"We don't do anything until we find out what they want. They may not even be hostile."  
  
"What do you mean? They took a whole town hostage, screwed up the buildings, and did something to the people. How can they not be hostile?"  
  
As if to punctuate his statement, another alien emerged from its cell and began to move toward the duo. J shot it. This encouraged more aliens to move toward them.  
  
"We're surrounded!" K said.  
  
"I noticed that, K!" J shot two more of the aliens.  
  
K pulled out his weapon and shot an alien moving towards him.  
  
Nothing happened.  
  
The bolt was absorbed by an energy shield that surrounded the alien.  
  
"Agent J, my weapon is useless!" K yelled. J turned and shot the same alien, with the same result.  
  
"Forget him, he's shielded. Get the rest!" K yelled. He began to shoot any of the aliens around him, but the same thing happened every time.  
  
"Let's get out of here!" J called, kicking an alien in the knee. Then he and K were on the run. The hunters had become the hunted. 


	5. Intentions Become Clear

The students ran as fast as they could, but it was to no avail. There was nothing to be done. The strange craft had come during the half-time show at the homecoming football game. The homecoming royalty were seated in their thrones at the fifty yard line when the vehicle landed. It was small, about the size of a tool shed. A hatch opened and six Borg emerged. Most of the assembled crowd thought that this was a magnificent part of the show, however. That was the general concensus, at least, until one of the Borg walked up to the homecoming king and injected him with something. They did something similar to the queen. Then, in a brilliant flash of light, more of the aliens appeared in the stands. They started grabbing the students and spectators and injecting them with the same substance they had used on the homecoming court. Now the students of the high school were getting nervous. But, of course, it was far too late. The students who had been injected were already succumbing to the will of the collective and helping to assimilate their classmates. The two police officers that came to each football game as a precautionary measure were easily overcome, since the aliens were shielding themselves from the bullets. The assimilation was almost too easy; as the number of students assimilated rose, so did the number of assimilations, exponentially. Soon most of the 2000 students in attendance had been assimilated. Another 500 were infected with small numbers of nanoprobes purposefully, so they would go home or, in some cases, to hospitals, and spread the nanoprobes further. Slowly, the Earth was losing its humanity to the Borg.  
  
* * *  
  
Meanwhile, the collective had made great progress. They had dismantled their sphere to use for resoures and had now moved out of orbit completely, leaving no evidence that they had ever been in space. Construction of an interplexing beacon in Arizona had been completed, and a signal was sent to the collective. Two important ships had loaded the last bits of the sphere into their holds and were on their way to important destinations. The first used its transwarp drive to rendezvous with the collective in the Delta Quadrant. It would give the Borg of the period an update of sorts. But instead of showing how to use new technologies and construct them, the consciousness of the 24th century Borg would be integrated with that of the 21st century Borg. Then the nanoprobes would take care of the rest of the work, modifying all the ships and drones in the collective to be exactly as the 24th century knew them to be. And then it would bring reinforcements, cubes armed with perfect 24th century weaponry and transwarp drive. Stations would be built, defenses positioned. The Borg would finish with Earth, then colonize the rest of the planets in the Sol system. Then they would move on to the Klingon Empire, the Romulans, the Vulcans, the Andorians, the Zarthans, Bugs, Cepillapoids, Cardassians, Bajorans, Kazon, perhaps even Species 8472. Efforts could be made to assimilate the Q, other dimensions, other realities, then galaxies and universes far beyond the reach of any other species. The entirety of the universe, the very fabric of time and space, could be assimilated. Could be mastered, captured, and tamed.  
  
But first came Earth, the target of the Borg at this time. The collective would arrive with reinforcements in four days; three for the small ship to reach the Delta Quadrant at transwarp and one day to update the collective. Then the Borg would send ships through a transwarp hub, and they would arrive in a matter of moments.  
  
The other ship's destination was much closer. Heavily shielded and armed, it headed towards a well-guarded base in the remote desert of Nevada...  
  
* * *  
  
"Zed! We need out of here NOW!" K yelled into his communicator.  
  
"Emergency?"  
  
"Level 5."  
  
"Okay, have you back in a minute."  
  
K stopped running and called out to J, "Stand still, kid."  
  
"What?" J asked as he stopped. "They're after us!"  
  
No sooner did he speak the words than he saw K explode. He had glown with an unearthly light and then, POOF! He was gone. J look at his own hands, saw them begin to glow, too. Then he felt himself pulled in a direction he didn't know existed. Suddenly, he was back at MIB headquarters, looking very startled.  
  
"Matter transporter." Zed said. "Got it from the Akerians."  
  
"What's the situation?" K asked.  
  
"The aliens have disassembled their ship into a bunch of smaller ships. One flew off into deep space. The rest descended on the Earth, landing near all sorts of targets: Military instillations, civilian areas, remote villages in Africa. There's no rhyme or reason to it."  
  
"Have we got any.." J was interrupted.  
  
"Message incoming!" K said. "From Vandenburg AFB. No visual, but its on everything: Radio, microwave, a few sources I don't even recognize."  
  
"Put it up."  
  
A flat mechanical voice came over the speakers.  
  
"We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile." The message cut out.  
  
"That was broadcast in every langage to every device that could recieve it across the world."  
  
Zed said, "Initiate protocol 7-1-3. We have an invasion on our hands." 


	6. A Foothold On The World

Area 51 had been shrouded in mystery for a great many years. Many had claimed to have seen aliens on site, and flying saucers in the air space above the remote desert outpost were often reported to local authorities. Most of these people had been either insane or lying, however. But today was different, the old man thought to himself, as he watched the huge ship descend from the sky. He had watched the base from this, the closest point which a civilian could reach, every day now for the last decade, and never seen anything particularly amazing. His only company had been an old wooden mailbox, and together they had watched for years. Most reports of alien activity were little blurs on the horizon, not a huge vessel flying straight overhead. He mused to himself, with a chuckle, that thay'd never be able to cover this one up. He'd tell everyone!  
  
An old Ford pulled up next to him on the dusty, un-paved road. Inside the car, the man could see two men in suits, talking.  
  
"What does Zed say about this one, N? Are we still worried about containment at level 5? I mean, I don't think we've ever even BEEN on level 5 alert status."  
  
"We give up on containment and take any action necessary when and if we reach level 10. Until then, keep your neuralyzer ready."  
  
Two men got out, dressed in black suits, and looked at the ship as it hovered over the base on the horizon.  
  
"Hey," the old man said, "What do you want?"  
  
"Oh, just to have a little chat." Said the first man. "What's goin' on over there?"  
  
The man looked the agents over, as if assesing their validity, then offered, "I dunno. I saw that ship there arrive... flew smack dab over my head, it did! Dangerous lot, them."  
  
"Why do you say that?"  
  
"Those damn aliens! They're in cahoots with the Japs, I tell ya! They got us at the Harbor, and they'll keep on messin' with us 'till we're all dead!"  
  
Clearly the old man was insane. Although he was right about one thing; the alien ship was not here to do the Earth any good.  
  
"Bright out here, isn't it, V?" N said, putting on a pair of sunglasses.  
  
"Sure is, N." V said while doing the same.  
  
"What are you guys, some kind of government agency?"  
  
"No sir, of course not!" N said. Then he flippd out his neuralyzer and flashed it in the man's face. "The government's for losers."  
  
V took over at this point. "You did not see extra-terrestrial activity here at Area 51. You will not come here again. You will get a mental exam. And, for heaven's sake, the Japanese aren't working with aliens, nor are they plotting to destroy the United States."  
  
"Go home." N commanded. The man got into his old pickup truck and left.  
  
"Now, what the devil are they up to?" N asked, mainly to himself. "We can't have them getting at the stuff in there. They'll have the best the military has to offer."  
  
"You mean, there AREN'T aliens in there?" V asked.  
  
"Nah, but we keep the hype up to keep people away from the REAL action. Even released some fake satellite photos a few years back."  
  
"Then what do they want in there?"  
  
"Even if there aren't aliens or MIB technology there, it's a well defended little outpost. Probably they're looking for a place to controll their forces from."  
  
"Do you hear something?" V asked. "Sort of a roaring?"  
  
The two agents looked and saw a jet coming from the north. It covered the distance from the horizon to right over their heads in about one second. Slightly strange that the plane could travel THAT fast. It landed twenty meters away. The door opened, and an MIB agent disembarked.  
  
"Hey, what's goin' on?" N asked the man, running over. Suddenly the agent turned. Only he was not an agent now. He was... Borg. N ran right into him, not being able to stop in time after seeing the eyepiece and discolored skin. The Borg reached to inject him, but N grabbed a circular device and slapped it on the Borg's forehead. Blue energy cackled around the Borg, but it was not electrocuting him. Instead it was creating a static field of time. The Borg was in stasis.  
  
"Woah!" V said, running over to help.  
  
"Get him in the car! We need to get him to HQ."  
  
"What was he doing on the jet? It's ours!"  
  
"They 'assimilated' it, that's my guess. Which means they have all of our information. We can't worry about that now, though, look!"  
  
Fifteen Borg disembarked from the jet. They seemed uninterested in N and V, but that didn't encourage the duo to stay any longer. They loaded the former agent into the car and took off for the branch of the MIB in the west. There they arranged helicopter transport... non-stop to New York city.  
  
The wind whipped through agent K's hair as he stood on the helicopter pad, waiting for the shipment of the Borg in stasis. The chopper set down and the alien was unloaded, now placed in a proper stasis pod. That would keep it contained... the locking mechanism could stand up to several volleys of Series IV Deatomizer fire.  
  
"Where to?" J asked. "Medical bay, or Analysis?"  
  
K considered a moment, then said, "Medical bay. We need to find out how its body works before the analysis can help."  
  
"Right." J said, and wheeled the pod to its destination.  
  
"I've never seen anything like this." Elle had said when she saw the Borg drone for the first time. After some testing, she had a presentation ready for J, K, and Zed. "It's our agent, all right, but it's like the aliens changed him." she said.  
  
"They stuck these implants all over his body... why?" J asked.  
  
"They did more than that." Elle called up a display on the wall screen. "This is a sample of his blood, under 500 X magnification."  
  
"It looks all right, but it's the wrong color." Zed said.  
  
"Right. Now when I moved from the regular microscope to the Scanning Electron..." A new graphic popped up, showing a red blood corpuscle at a high enough magnification to fill the screen.  
  
"Another implant?" J asked.  
  
"Yes, but a very tiny one. This little machine contains code. It attaches to the blood cell like a virus, and re-writes the DNA. And it's not just hematopoetic tissue... skin, organs, muscle. They're all being changed."  
  
"So it's actually turning him into another species?" K asked.  
  
"Not exactly. He's still a human under there. The code the probes are implanting are affecting his behavior, and ordering the body to grow new implants. Watch." Elle took a surgical instrument and put it near the implant on the man's cheek. "The first thing I did when I got him in was try to remove an implant for study." She removed the implant and sealed it in a bio hazard container. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the skin on the Borg's face began to wriggle, and an implant exactly the same as the one that had been removed sprouted up in its place. Elle re-sealed the stasis pod before the Borg woke up.  
  
"My god..." was all K could say.  
  
"There's more." Elle said. She changed to one final display. "This implant is deep in the brain. It's sending and recieving transmissions."  
  
"What kind of transmissions?" Zed asked.  
  
"As far as I can tell, brain waves. Each of these aliens... these Borg is linked to the other one. They have a collective intelligence."  
  
"I don't understand." J said.  
  
"It's like their brains are on a constant file sharing system. Together, they make up one big brain."  
  
"Anything else?" K asked.  
  
"I'll need to do some more tests, then I'll let you know what I find."  
  
J, K, and Zed left the medical unit and headed towards Zed's office.  
  
"How many of them have we got on the planet?" K asked.  
  
"Last count has it as four million, exponentially increasing." Zed replied.  
  
"This is gonna shoot containment to hell." J said. "How do we compensate for millions of lost people?"  
  
Elle had moved from the medical exam and biochemical analysis to the most important part of the probing... extermination methods. So far, any toxins she injected had been filtered out by the cellular probes. The Borg was shielded against radiation, and she couldn't seem to think of any other way to kill it. Then she remembered the implant in the brain. Maybe she could overload it somehow. She filled the cavity on the side of the pod with a drug that would spike brain activity, then return it to normal in a a few seconds. She inserted the vial of medicine into the pod, then directed the syringe inside the sealed unit directly over the head. She injected it deep into the head, hoping to give it a head start over the micro probes. She watched for effects. None were apparent for a few seconds, but then the Borg opened its eyes.  
  
It took stock of its situation for a moment. Already its nanoprobes had regulated the release timing of the chemical Laurel had injected it with, and it estimated that it had one minute and forty-seven seconds of consciousness in which to escape. It released its injection tubules, forcing them through the walls of the pod, and began to decode the locking mechanism and stasis field. It was a simple task; neither system was encoded. The pod slid open and the Borg emerged.  
  
"Oh, no." Elle said. She backed into the corner of the small laboratory, the Borg following her. It grabbed her, and injected her with a fresh dose of nanoprobes...  
  
K and J entered the lab where an alert had been raised, weapons drawn. They were shocked at what they saw. The lab was unrecognisable, converted just like the Montana town. The entire room bore a striking resemblance to the inside of the landed ship... strange markings on the screens, green light, and wispy trails of steam floating about. The room was hotter than the rest of MIB, and it was distinctly humid. And, most importantly, two Borg were milling about, doing their tasks, and ignoring K and J. Both were former MIB agents... the first the Borg picked up in Nevada, and the second...  
  
Laurel Weaver.  
  
"Elle! Are you okay?" J rused over to her, but she turned with inhuman speed as she saw him approach and hit him, hard, with a sweep of her arm. He went crashing into a glass cabinet, breaking vials of medicine. K rushed over and helped him up.  
  
"Come on, let's get out of here!" he said as he pulled the younger man up.  
  
"What about Elle?"  
  
"She's gone."  
  
"But..."  
  
K took J squarely by the shoulders and stared into his eyes. "Kid, she's gone." J looked as if he were going to protest again, but then nodded his head and followed K back to Zed's office.  
  
"Glad you're back. We just got reports of another--"  
  
"Zed, we have a breach."  
  
"What? What happened?"  
  
"Borg broke out of the pod. It's taking over the lab." J said.  
  
"We need to isolate the computer in that section before the infection spreads."  
  
"I'm on it." K said from his control console.  
  
"Too late!" J said, for as he looked out the office window at the computer terminals, he saw them all change from scrolling white and grey text to green, circular symbols. He felt the temperature rise, the humidity increase, and saw the lights dim to an eerie glow. Then a door was forced open and six Borg emerged.  
  
"I thought there was only ONE Borg." Zed exclaimed.  
  
"A minute ago, there was." K said gravely. "Those are MIB personnell. They've been..." K fumbled for a word.  
  
"Assimilated." J said. "That's what the message said, 'You will be assimilated.' Great, so wiping humanity off isn't enough for them. Now they've got to turn us into brainless servants."  
  
As K, J, and Zed watched, the men and women below gathered behind desks that had been thrown onto their sides and drew arms. One young man fired a shot that hit Laurel (For the others still refused to think of her as a Borg) right in the head. She fell, appeared to think for a moment, and then collapsed. Another Borg fell to the weapon of a middle-aged woman in nearly the same fashion. But the third shot did not work. It was true and on target, ready to hit one of the drone right in the chest. It was as if someone had painted a target on the drone's heart. But as the bolt of crimson energy came near to the Borg, it erected a shield. The same was true of the other two. Any shot fired at them was absorbed by their shields.  
  
"And, 'Resistance is futile.' " K said, watching as the eighteen people below him became one with the Borg. 


End file.
